What does Google THINK your site is about?

This article is designed to give you a better understanding of some of the core elements of your website’s visibility to the search engines – mainly Google. There are CORE elements you must have under your belt if you are going to win the battle online.

What you "say" on each page to the search engines is important. Analyze your page through the Google API and determine what "topics / silos" Google thinks your site is about. You may be surprised about what you left out!

Title Tag Review:

The Title Tag not only displays at the top of the browser window, but also appears as the linked text in the search results.

The page Title is indexed by all the major search engines — Google, Yahoo! and MSN — and is used as part, or in whole, for the page listing in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages).

Remember, the Title of your site MUST grab attention, create curiosity and evoke emotion to get the user to click. Do not make the mistake of just using your company name. If you fail to get the click, your top ranking is worthless.

In terms of SEO, the Title Tag is of average importance to Google for competitive phrases,but with Yahoo! and MSN it is still very important.

The Title Tag:

Leaving out your web site Title is similar to publishing a newspaper without a headline. It’s that important!

The Title not only displays at the top of the browser window, but also appears when potential customers perform a search and review the results. The Title is indexed by all the major search engines.

Search engines do not alphabetize their results, so refrain from using symbols such as "!!" or "AAA" in your Title. That technique was effective back in the late 90s but it isn’t anymore.

Placing your most important keywords in the Title, while it was a focus years ago in SEO, is also no longer a requirement.

It is far more effective for you to create a killer Title that is highly compelling and generate a top ranking through other means, including incoming links. Your Title must be readable and descriptive – don’t just stuff keywords in the Title. Shorter Title, more effective and descriptive. By being direct and qualifying your audience up front, you lower your cost per customer acquisition. Never use ALL CAPS, as it makes it difficult to read and it is considered "SHOUTING" on the Internet.

Instead, capitalize the first letter of each word (when appropriate). Generally, your Title should be 5 – 7 words. Google displays a maximum of 64 characters, so ensure you have less than that so you are assured your Title will not be cut off.

Yahoo! displays 110 characters and MSN will display 70, but with the market share that Google has, it is highly advised you comply with their current standards. More characters are often indexed than what displays in the SERPs.

It is said that success is 50% competitive intelligence and 50% figuring out how to do it better." This is also true for the Title tag. To see the top scoring Titles for the keyphrase you are targeting, type "allintitle:keyphrase" in Google.

Note: Some experts will recommend using the "intitle" command. In order to see the top Titles, you must use "allintitle" or the entire phrase will not be used.

Looking at the Top 30 results of search engine to get ideas on how to make your Title more effective.

STOMPER TIP: Don’t use more than one Title per page. Although, it is allowed on some search engines, it is not a good practice, as penalties can be assessed. Don’t be tempted to repeat your keywords in the Title tag, because search engines may penalize you, and never repeat a term back-to-back in the Title. The reason for this is not necessarily getting penalized, it is to ensure your Title is compelling and will grab attention.

Where is the Title? The Title can be found in the HTML code. It is contained in the <HEAD> tag near the top of the document. It looks like this:

<HEAD>

<TITLE>Your Site’s Title Here</TITLE>

</HEAD>

How often do you click on the #1 result in the SERPs? Not every time? What is the reason? According to a survey we conducted, the number one reason a user clicks on a search result is that it was "compelling or matched their search query." What made the result compelling? That’s right – the Title. What Not To Do

It should be understood that the algorithms of Google, Yahoo! and MSN are all very different, thus, the "Perfect Title" does not exist. You read that right, the perfect Title in terms of meeting the "Big Three" algorithms does NOT exist. There is just enough difference in their algorithms to not allow for a top ranking to occur across all three with the Title tag alone.

Keyword Meta Tag:

There is still a lot of misconception about the Keyword Meta Tag. Due to spamming issues dating back to the late 90s, the Keyword Meta Tag has been devalued. Google has never indexed the tag, and while Yahoo! and MSN give importance to the tag, it isn’t enough alone to get your site top ranking.

Warning: There is plenty of software designed to scrape Meta Keyword Tag information and many gurus suggest the first place you go to build a keyword list is your competitor’s sites and take their keywords from this tag.

Instead, it is best to fill this tag with very general or generic terms. The boost that you will get from Yahoo! or MSN is worth sacrificing from allowing your competition to get the keywords in seconds that took you hours to research. Example of the keyword meta tag:

<HEAD>

<TITLE>Your Site’s Title Here</TITLE>

</HEAD>

Is it important to use commas? No. Commas are not indexed, nor are they used by the engines to separate the keyword phrases. Commas are for aesthetic reasons only for the webmaster.

A word of caution: Do not use your competitor’s company name, trademarked products or words in your keyword tag. There have been numerous lawsuits filed because of this. This is because use of trademarked terms in your keyword tag can be interpreted as trademark infringement. Most legal experts will tell you that permission is required before using a trademark on your site at all, even in the visible area of your site. Also, there have been lawsuits due to phrases used that sounded or looked similar to the owned trademark. Keep these very important factors in mind when selecting your keyword phrases.

Is good idea to have at least one of your some keyword phrases in your Title

Meta Description:

The Meta Description is indexed and used by Google, Yahoo! & MSN. It is recommended that you keep the description to less than 200 characters. The Meta Description works with the Title to attract potential customers. Ourtesting shows when a prospect performs a search in Google, the results displayed are the Title (hyperlinked) and the Description only if theMeta Description contains the keyword phrase the prospect used in thesearch.

If you do not include a Meta Description, most search engines, by default, will use the 30-40 words of your copy, which could look very unappealing to a prospect. Be careful not to keyword stuff your description.

Google: Google will pull from the Meta Description Tag as long as the keyword phrase performed in the search also is contained in the Meta Description Tag.

Yahoo!: If your site is listed in the Yahoo! Directory, the description will be pulled from the directory listing. This is the case, even though Yahoo! is pulling the Title from the website and not the directory listing.

MSN: They currently "mesh" the description. The first part is from the actual meta description and then ellipses will occur followed by the second half which is taken from the first paragraph of text on the page.

In terms of SEO, the Meta Description Tag is not very important to Google, has average importance to MSN, but is very important to Yahoo!.

Keep your description to 150 characters (including spaces) or less. Your focus should be in creating curiosity with the reader, but not satisfying it with your Description. If you do it right, you will achieve higher click traffic to your site. Do not repeat any keyword phrase more than three times, and do not have the same keyword phrase word repeated back-to-back.

Warning: Make sure you can back up any claims you make in your Meta Description. If you can’t, you may be sued.

Tip: To not allow Yahoo! to display the Title and the Description from their directory and use the ones on your website instead use:

Where is the DESCRIPTION?

<HEAD>

<TITLE>Your Site’s Title Here</TITLE>

</HEAD>

Is your Title and Description compelling?

Does it solve a problem?

Does it suggest that it solves that problem quickly?

If you answered "no" to any of the above, you need to do a rewrite. Remember when a search is performed on a search engine, two elements are displayed in the results list – the site’s Title and the Meta Description.

Heading Tags:

Headlines can be helpful to the search engines in addition to your visitors. There are six types of headings: <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, <h5>, and <h6>. They also rank in the same order for importance, so <h1> is the most important in terms of On-Page SEO.

You can use the headings to list your "headline" (h1) with its "tagline" underneath (h2). For example:

<h1>MakeFriendsAndMoney.com</h1>

<h2>Learn how to create: Online, Trading, Networking and Property income streams at MakeFriendsAndMoney.com</h2>

In the above example, it allows for the key phrase "MakeFriendsAndMoney" to be used naturally in both headings, thus increasing the on-page optimization score for the key phrase.

Images are important to your visitors / customers. They help build brand identity and improves the overall design of your site. But search engines today can’t "read" your images so SEOs have been "keyword stuffing" theimage ALT tags to gain better rankings. We advise against this practice.Instead, we recommend the ALT text be descriptive of the image…not a placeto inject 18 kabillion keyword phrases.

ALT Text Importance – There is a major difference between indexing and importance, or what SEOs call "relevancy". Many webmasters will point to the fact that their site comes up #1 for the term "Glendale Arizona top residential and commercial real estate specialist for 2008" and state, "See, the only place that text occurs is in the ALT tag, so search engines do index it and it counts."

Okay, let’s be reasonable here. What is the likelihood of someone actually typing the above search string? Besides the SEO, the person being referenced and his mother? Slim to none, right?

Over the last few years we have seen a trend here at StomperLabs which shows that using ALT text for SEO purposes has diminished. The American Disabilities Act (ADA) has strict guidelines in order to be ADA compliant. I guarantee you, they do not look favorably at ALT text that has been keyword-stuffed.

Have you ever witnessed a visually-impaired individual use the Web? With a device which reads aloud the contents of a Web page, the impaired individual will be inundated with "ALT Text Spam". Sometimes the reader is stuck on one graphic for more than 40 seconds reading all of the keywords that have been stuffed. That isn’t a good experience for them.

According to a Google engineer, what you should do is create an ALT [text] that is relevant to the image so it gives the user a good experience, including the visually-impaired. The ALT text is indexed, but it is downgraded in the algorithm. The reason?

"We see ALT text as relevant as the Keyword Meta tag," said the Google engineer. That should say it all as Google has never used the Keyword Meta tag due to its high spam rate.

What you need to do is to use ALT text in the manner in which it was designed to be used by the W3C: to describe the image. If appropriate, a keyword phrase can be used, but under no circumstances should you stuff the ALT tag with keywords. Keep it to a simple description.

Basically, remember to be compliant, not just with the W3C, but also with the ADA.

Sitemap:

Sitemaps (XML not HTML) are important for the search engines to help index your site more completely.

Google Page Rank:

That green toolbar everyone seems to watch, the higher the number the better. However, don’t get caught up in the "green bar addiction".

Many webmasters already know what Alexa.com is, but if you don’t that’s fine. It’s a free service, owned by Amazon, that shows you how your site compares by way of traffic volume, to all the other sites in the world. The lower your score the better.

Social Media Your presence in Social Media is critical to your long term success. Web 2.0 is changing the way websites are marketed and if you aren’t in the "know" you will be left behind.

RSS Feed In every way possible, you should syndicate your content. Think of yourself as a magazine for your industry, every time you comment on something you should put it in your RSS ‘feeder’ and get your content out to the market.

Technorati is a Blog Search / Web 2.0 Aggregation site. The lower your Technorati rank the better. However, a score of ZERO means you aren’t listed, so that isn’t good. Technorati tracks the "blogosphere" and reports back on who in the Social Media universe is talking about "you" (and linking to your site or blog).

del.icio.us is a web-based bookmarking site. Delicious users save their bookmarks on the website so they can access them from any browser.

Don’t forget to get your website analysed for FREE at StomperNet Site Seer ! StomperNet provides a full library of expert content on every aspect of On-Page SEO. Click here for your FREE report: http://makefriendsandmoney.com/stompernet

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